Fontaine's Achievement In This Paper

Fontaine (2017: 15):

In closing, I follow Thompson (2015:26) when he says “everything we know about language suggests that structural configurations always take on a semiotic life of their own”. This also applies to lexis. In SFL, one of the main approaches to working with variation is through context (especially context of situation or register). I have tried to reconcile these different perspectives by drawing on context to enable the representation of the semiotic life of words.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, structural configurations constitute the syntagmatic dimension of grammar. The syntagmatic dimension of lexis is collocation (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 64, 644).

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, context of situation and register are not the same thing — as Fontaine's own Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, adapted from Halliday, both illustrate. A context of situation is an instance of context (the culture as a semiotic system), whereas register is a sub-potential of language. That is, situation and register differ in terms of both stratification and instantiation. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384):

[3] As the examination of this paper has demonstrated, Fontaine has suggested applying the cline of instantiation to lexical items, oblivious of the fact that, in SFL Theory, the cline of instantiation already applies to lexical items, as it does to all strata. In doing so, Fontaine has equated 'lexical item as potential' with 'most local context', despite the fact that SFL Theory (i) locates lexical items within a stratum of language, lexicogrammar, and (ii) identifies context with the culture — not language — as a semiotic system. The theoretical relevance of the term 'most local' to context, or lexis, has not been discussed anywhere in the paper.

"Martin’s (1992) Work In This Area Is Noteworthy"

Fontaine (2017: 7):

Martin’s (1992) work in this area is noteworthy, in particular chapter five in English Text draws out some important issues and offers a very useful overview of how lexical relations can be approached within SFL. In particular, he discusses very well the “problem of units” (1992:290), which raises important questions about lexical representation. Indeed, as I do here, he asks how we can define lexical items. Interestingly, he proposes an alternative, suggesting it would be fruitful to “turn to the level of context” (p.291) and he shows that it is, but his interests and the types of questions he seeks to address lead the discussion towards register variables. This is not in any way a criticism since this perspective brings with it important insights. However it nevertheless remains concentrated on system networks and therefore the dimension of delicacy. Most approaches to lexis within SFL adhere to the dimension of delicacy. Martin (2016: 46-47) points out important contributions to studies of lexis in the area of phraseology, e.g. Tucker (2006) and Bednarek (e.g. 2008), where the focus is on corpus-based approaches to lexis; both make significant contributions to phraseology.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. Martin (1992) is a rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's (1976) lexicogrammatical cohesion as Martin's model of discourse semantics (evidence here), with his Chapter 5 being his rebranding of their lexical cohesion as his experiential system of IDEATION (evidence here). Halliday & Hasan's lexical cohesion is not so much concerned with lexical relations, but with how relations between lexical items can be used to create textual cohesion.

[2] To be clear, Martin's discussion is concerned with the problem of 'semantic units' (p290), and the unit he comes up with is a 'message part' (p293), which 'may or may not be realised by a single lexical item' (p293).

[3] To be clear, Martin's discussion of his semantic unit, the message part, does not raise important questions about lexical representation, even if the notion of lexical representation in a mental lexicon were consistent with SFL Theory and the known facts of human biology and brain science.

[4] To be clear, Martin's discussion of the problem of delimiting lexical items (p290-1) takes the syntagmatic perspective of collocation, instead of the paradigmatic perspective of agnation. Systemically, the argument for a lexical item involves providing evidence that the wording in question can be replaced by a single lexical item.

[5] To be clear, Martin (1992) misunderstands the SFL notion of context, confusing it with varieties of language: genre and register (evidence here). In Hjelmslevian terms, he mistakes varieties of a denotative semiotic for the content plane of a connotative semiotic. Because of these misunderstandings, Martin's discussion is neither fruitful nor insightful.

[6] Here Fontaine misunderstands Martin's text. To be clear, what Martin purports to be doing is using field, the ideational dimension of context, which Martin mistakes as a register variable, to 'set up' his experiential semantic unit 'message part'.

[7] To be clear, there are two reasons why approaches to lexis in Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory remain "concentrated" on system networks. The first is that the system network is the formalism for representing language as meaning potential. The second is that SFL defines lexis as most delicate grammar.